IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER XII.
At
Jacob's Well
Preparing to leave Jerusalem—The
cavalcade—Farewell-—The city's resurrection—
Enjoyment—Lodges in vineyards [Isa. i. 8]—Watch-towers [Luke xiv.
28]—Bethel —Site of ancient Bethel—Abraham's
migrations—Interview with Lot—Minute accuracy [Gen. xiii.
10]—Jacobs dream [Gen. xxviii. 15]—Jacob's pillar [Gun. xxviii.
18-32}—Jeroboam's rival temple—Prophecy of Amos v. 5—Site and
scenery of Ai [Josh. viii. 28]—Ride to Shiloh—Means of identifying
it—Solitariness—Sacredness —Hannah, Samuel, and Eli [i Sam.
i.-iv.]—Stolen wives [Judges xxi. at]—On to Sychar—Unspent
blessing of Jacob [Gen. xlix. 22-26]—Adventure—Jacob's Well—
Defaced condition—Causes—Topographical notices [Gen. xxxiii.
19]—Questions— Mausoleum of Joseph [Josh. xxiy. 32]—Jesus at
Jacob's well—Gerizim: "this mountain" {John iv. at]—Plain of Muckhna
(John iv. 35!—Beauty of the region - Fanaticism of the people—
Unexpected welcome.
AFTER our early morning ride from the Convent of Mar Saba,
we spent some busy hours in preparing for our final departure from Jerusalem,
which we were to leave in the afternoon. Our party had now been increased to
eleven, and we had engaged a permanent dragoman to conduct us from Jerusalem to
Beyrout, and to supply us with provisions, tents, horses, mules, and servants,
- with everything, in fact, that was necessary for tent-life and for a
pilgrimage of many weeks in the East We found it expedient to have a regular
contract with our dragoman, which should be subscribed by both of us, and
sealed in presence of the British Consul with his own seal and ours; the
arrangement being, that one half of the stipulated sum should be paid him at
once, and the other half at the conclusion of the journey if it should be found
that he had honestly kept by his engagement. Every week's experience showed us
the wisdom of this course. Even when the Arab might be tempted to trifle with
his spoken promises, he pays great respect to the same promise when he has
sealed it with his own seal; and the whole arrangement being a wonderful help
to a treacherous memory, prevented endless disputes, and gave us much greater
security than we should otherwise have had for the good behaviour of our
guide.
As we wended our way through the Moslem quarter of the city and
passed northward through the Damascus-gate, we presented a rather formidable
appearance, our fifteen servants enlarging our party to twenty-six. There were
thirty-seven horses, mules, and donkeys bearing' our eight tents, our
cooking-apparatus, our luggage, and the greater part of our provisions for many
weeks; so that Nijim, our chief dragoman, curvetting on his rather sprightly
Arab steed in front of our cavalcade, and aware that he had made a good bargain
for himself that would leave him a considerable margin of profit when he
reached his home in Beyrout, showed an excusable amount of
self-satisfaction.
Men have often remarked on the sadness that came over
their spirit when they were looking on some interesting or sacred object for
the last time. We remember how Kitto eloquently records this experience when
taking his farewell look at Mount Ararat - that old harbour of our wrecked
humanity. We were thus saddened into silence when, turning round at a sharp
angle on the road at some distance northward, we believed ourselves to be
taking our last glance at Jerusalem. When we had first looked on it some weeks
before, its marvellously chequered history had rapidly passed before our mind
like the scenes in a panoramic picture, and now we stood trying to forecast its
future. Were all the unaccomplished oracles in which the name of Jerusalem
appeared, to be interpreted in a spiritual sense as referring to the Church of
Christ? Would not this captive daughter of Zion yet arise, and shine, and shake
off her dust, and again put on her beautiful garments? Would not the place
where the gospel seeds were first sown, become the granary and treasure-house
of their richest fruits? It seems certain that the Jews shall one day return to
their own land and capital, and that this return is somehow to be associated
with the taking away of their thick veil of unbelief and their conversion to
Christ; and what will Palestine and Jerusalem become when risen Israel comes
back to her own. Perhaps that old gray shrunken city may become the
meeting-place of all the Churches from all lands, and the glory of the whole
earth. We are certain of the spiritual resurrection of the Jew; we hope even
for the material restoration of Jerusalem.
" Oh that some angel might a
trumpet sound,
At which the Church, falling upon her face.
Should cry
so loud until the trump were drowned,
And by that cry, of her dear Lord
obtain
That your sweet sap might come again!"
We were to rest that
evening at Bethel, and as it was more than three hours distant from Jerusalem,
all our time would be needed to reach it before sunset. But it was a pleasant
journey. There was something exhilarating in the cooler air after the sultry
atmosphere of the Jericho plains and the shores of the Dead Sea from which we
had come. We were pleased, too, at the novelty and adventure of the wandering
tent-life on which we were now entering in earnest. Then our dragoman was
garrulous and communicative, and much inclined to give his scanty vocabulary of
English words a good airing; and we in turn had many things to ask of him which
it was useful to know as early as possible on our journey. While on the way he
led frequently past gardens and orchards that contrasted pleasantly with the
parched mountain-sides of the Judean desert, and the narrow sombre streets of
the old city which we had left behind us.
It was on this road that our
attention was first drawn to those lodges or booths in gardens and vineyards to
which allusion is made, more than once, in the prophetic Scriptures. They stand
on elevated places, and are composed of rude poles interwoven with the leafy
branches of trees - a coarse mat sometimes serving the purpose of the foliage
which soon withers. During the fruit-seasons, a solitary person, usually old or
decrepit, is placed in them, for the purpose of watching against the
depredations of thieves or animals, and giving the alarm to stronger men.
Nothing could have been more fitly chosen by a prophet as the emblem of
instability, or of desolation and desertion, than one of those miserable sheds.
It was, therefore, with a true poet's eye that Isaiah used it as the vivid
picture of Judah when wasted, forsaken, and depopulated: "The daughter of Zion
shall be left as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." The watch-towers in the
midst of the vineyards which we occasionally saw on the same journey, are of a
much more elaborate and stable construction, being built of stone, and
sometimes rising to the height of forty or fifty feet, so as to command from
their summit, where the watch sits, the whole of the surrounding country.
During the busy weeks of the vintage-season, the greater number of the workers
dwell in the hollow interior of these watch-towers. But it is not every
proprietor of a vineyard that can afford to erect such expensive structures. If
he be a prudent man, he will "sit down first and count the cost." Our Lord was
therefore, according to his custom, taking advantage of common observation to
extract from it his higher lessons, when he employed the man "who had begun to
build a tower and was not able to finish it," as the representative of foolish
and short-sighted improvidence.
Just while the sun was setting, we
rapidly pitched our tents on a grassy plot in a hollow valley on the margin of
the site of ancient Bethel, with its surrounding pasture-grounds. We could yet
see at some little distance Beitun, the modern Bethel, a Moslem town built on a
narrow shelving ground between two valleys, and with a few tall waving palms
interspersed among its white houses and domes, which help to make it
picturesque. The name of Bethel had a mighty charm for us, and we were
impatient to visit it; but the silvery stars were already marshalling fast in
the sky above us, and we must be content to wait until the early morning, ere
we walked over those scenes which had long ago borne the footprints not only of
patriarchs and seers, but of more heavenly visitants. We shrink from obtruding
our more private religious services upon the notice of our readers. It is
enough to say that from this evening onwards, through all our journeyings, the
voice of united prayer went up nightly from more than one of our tents to the
"God of Bethel."
Soon after sunrise on the following morning, we had
climbed up to the table-land where was the site of ancient Bethel. A more
modern town must have been built on it since, for over a considerable extent of
ground there are the distinct traces of Christian architecture, and even of
medieval sculpture, - there is a half-ruined Greek church among others; but,
mingling arith these, there are the equally unmistakable fragments of older
foundations and structures, revealing the ruins of one of the oldest and most
sacred cities in the world.
As we wandered over many acres of this
region, everything we saw was in perfect harmony with those various parts of
Old Testament story of which Bethel and its neighbourhood were the scene. The
pasture-ground was unusually rich - wild flowers mingling in abundance with the
nutritious grass, and supplying food to numerous flocks of sheep and goats.
Nothing could be more natural than that Abraham, in his various migrations,
should more than once have tarried long in such a region, especially when he
found that its water-supply was quite as abundant as its pasturage. In one
place two vigorous fountains send forth their bright streams, to which women
from the neighbouring town were coming forth on that very morning with pitchers
on their heads, to draw water. Was it at all un likely that Sarah and her
maidens had many a time plunged their pitchers into those very springs? Or that
that large ruined cistern which was supplied from those fountains, and which
bore the marks of very ancient Hebrew masonry, was the favourite place to which
Abraham and his shepherds brought their sheep and oxen, and asses and camels,
to drink? It must also have been somewhere hereabouts that, when the flocks and
herds of Abraham and Lot had so much increased that even this luxuriant
pasture-land was too narrow to sustain them both, Abraham proposed a friendly
separation between them, and gave Lot his choice of all the surrounding region
as far as the eye could reach. "Then" we are told "Lot lifted up his eyes, and
beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the
Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the
land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar." Now the plain of Jordan is not
generally visible from this Bethel tableland : but there is one grassy mound of
some height on which one can stand at this day, and, looking eastward, can
clearly trace the verdant margin of some miles in breadth through which the
Jordan flows, and by whose waters its fertile holms are irrigated; and its
grassy exuberance is only equalled at this day by the glorious vegetation
which, less than a month before, we had delighted to trace from the tops of the
Pyramids, skirting as with a line of emerald the banks of the Nile. And may we
not imagine the majestic patriarch standing with his less magnanimous nephew on
this very mount, when Lot accepted his uncle's generous conditions, and made
choice of that well-watered plain which afterwards cost him so dear
?
Large stones are scattered in profusion over many parts of this
pasture-land in the midst of which old Bethel once stood; and many a travelling
Bedouin at this day makes a pillow of them, and sleeps soundly when his eyes
have become weary of gazing up into the midnight sky. There was therefore no
unlikelihood in the wearied Jacob, when he was flying from the resentment of
his brother Esau, making a bed of those herbs and flowers, and pillowing his
head on one of those smooth boulders which lay all around him ready for his
purpose. But what a dream was his! A ladder stretching from earth to heaven -
the glory of Jehovah visible at its summit - bright angels ascending and
descending on its golden steps - and a voice from the midst of the excellent
glory, addressing the entranced dreamer in words of promise and comfort, that
included in them every article and blessing of the old covenant. And, as good
Fuller once said, "It matters not how hard our bed, if so heavenly our dreams."
That was a dream of no earthly growth or fashion. It was, in fact, a bright
page of divine revelation; for God, who has employed divers manners of
communicating with men, according to their circumstances and mental state,
chose dreams and visions as the earliest of them all. It assured Jacob of the
minuteness and the constancy of providential care; it symbolized the mediation
of Jesus Christ, which is God's way to us, and our way to God, by which access
has been opened for our persons and prayers into the gracious presence of the
Highest. How has this divinely-inspired dream, dreamed somewhere on that grassy
sward, commanded the homage of all the arts, and mingled . frorn the beginning
with the painting and the poetry, the architecture and the sculpture, not to
say the music and the eloquence, of Christendom!
Many a year afterwards,
Jacob returned to this same memorable spot to fulfil the vow which he had made
on the morning when the place had been to him as "the gate of heaven" - rearing
an altar to the Lord on the pillar which he had anointed, and on which his head
had rested when he dreamed his great dream. That pillar in due time became a
sanctuary, and the sanctuary became surrounded by a large city, where the
tribes often held their stated assemblies when the Judges ruled. But how did
Bethel's gold at length become dim! When Jeroboam revolted and formed his
northern kingdom, he erected in Bethel, at the southern extremity of his rebel
territory, one of his golden calves, and placed a temple over it that should
rival in magnitude and outward splendour that of Jerusalem. We never got an
adequate impression of the bold impiety of this act until, looking southward
while we were wandering over the site of Bethel, we unexpectedly saw Jerusalem,
with its Mosque of Omar and a large portion of its northern and eastern wall,
clearly outlined before us in the morning light. It then appeared that
Jeroboam's rival temple had been placed defiantly within sight of Jehovah's own
temple, and the city where he had chosen to record his name. A prophet of the
Lord had stood in Jeroboam's presence, and at the hazard of his life had
foretold the destruction of the rebel altar; an earthquake, as he spake,
rending it in two, and giving terrific sanction to his words of doom. Three
hundred years after, the pious young Josiah came, razed the altar to the
ground, bruised its stones to powder, and polluted the place on which it stood,
by burning on it the bones of those false priests who had ministered before it
Meanwhile the prophet Amos had pronounced the burden of the degenerate city -
"Bethel shall come to nought;" and in those scattered ruins amid which the
goats were peacefully browsing, and in those old vaulted foundations which had
been the undisturbed haunt of owls and jackals for so many centuries, we read
for the hundredth time in Palestine that " not one word which God hath spoken
shall fall to the ground." We knew that the site of Ai lay southward not far
off, for the careful examination of Van de Velde had raised into high
probability the conjecture that the Tell-el-hajar of the natives answered
exactly to all the requirements of the Scripture narrative respecting Ai. It is
worthy of notice that the very name, "the mount of the heap of stones,"
corresponds with what the sacred story says of it after its destruction : " And
Joshua burnt Ai, and made an heap of it for ever, a desolation unto this day."
Was this descriptive name branded on its calcined ruins in Joshua's time, and
has it lived through all the changes of thousands of years, during which it has
been rebuilt and has perished again? It would have been interesting to trace,
with our open Bible in our hand, the scene of the ambush of Joshua's men when
they lay concealed from the unsuspecting Aites, and to mark the spot where the
Hebrew leader stood with spear in hand, silently directing by well-understood
signs the movements of both parts of his army, until the flaming city assured
him of a second victory. But the morning was advancing ; our dragoman was
impatient; and the way was far to - Sychar, which we must by all means reach
before nightfall, and where we had determined to keep Sabbath on the following
day. And Shiloh, not exceeded in sacred interest even by Bethel, was to be
visited by us on our way northward, though it lay some distance out of our
course.
It was a .delightful ride of three hours and a. half to the
ruins of this old sanctuary, which for so many centuries had been holy ground.
In many places the country was finely undulating and even hilly, but on the
hilly slopes there were gardens of the olive, the fig, and the mulberry tree
often reaching to the summit. These were walled and terraced with rome industry
and skill, and men in considerable numbers were clearing the ground of weeds
and doing other services of a cheerful husbandry. We seemed to ourselves to
have been brought nearer home by such homely sights; and yet more, when we
beheld the wild thyme, the wild rose, and the honeysuckle which here and there
carpeted our path, and appeared to look upon us lovingly, like old familiar
faces. But there were many other flowers in that rich region which were quite
new to us both in form and colour; some of them of rare beauty, which we
dismounted to gather and take home with us to Scotland; though sometimes at the
risk of losing our impatient Arab steed, whose latent taste for botany had
evidently never been developed. After three hours, we diverged from the main
path to visit the ruins of Shiloh. Travellers with the Bible as their
guidebook, should have no difficulty in identifying the spot; for not only does
the modern name of the place, Silo or Siloan, hang out a guiding light, but the
topographical notices of it in the Book of Judges are so remarkably specific as
to leave you in absolute certainty about its locality. We are told that Shiloh,
the resting-place of the ark in the days of the Judges, was "on the north side
of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to
Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah." This fixes Shiloh as standing somewhere
between Bethel and Lebonah on the common route to Shechem, - not, however, on
the very highway, but somewhat to the right as you journey northward. Our
experience exactly corresponded with this. After travelling for three hours in
a northerly direction from Bethel, we turned aside on the right to the ruin
called Silo, after visiting which we came back to the old road. Soon after
this, we passed on the left El-Lebban, the Lebonah of Scripture, and proceeded
straight on our way to Nablous - the Shechem of the Old Testament, the Sychar
of the New, the Flavia Neapolis of Roman conquest.
Our by-path soon
brought us into a glen or valley, at the extremity of which was an eminence of
some height which we ascended amid tall grass and tangled shrubs, - finding on
its summit what seemed a half-ruined and roofless mosque, which was covered and
shaded by a Syrian oak with enormous branches whose leaves were beautiful and
fresh with the earliest green ot spring. As the oak rose higher than the
mosque, we climbed the wall, and, under the welcome shadow of the old tree,
took a survey of the whole surrounding region. It was mountainous on every
side, but the hills had everywhere a parched and white look about them, the
bare limestone rock protruding in many places; though it was easy, through our
glasses, to discover signs that in earlier days they had been terraced and
cultivated to their highest points, and that the whole district must at one
period have been covered with verdure and enriched with the choicest fruits.
There was, indeed, an almost oppressive silence and solitude about the place,
for we did not hear a human voice, nor were we able to trace a single village
within our whole range of vision. How different it must have been in those ages
which immediately followed the entrance of the chosen people into the promised
land! At this place, the tribes of Israel assembled to receive from Joshua, in
the presence of Eleazar the high priest and other heads of the nation, their
allotments of the territory which had just been conquered from the Canaanites,
as we find recorded in the Book of Joshua, that wonderful "doomsday book" of
the Hebrew commonwealth. To this selected spot, also, the ark of God had been
borne up from Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, immediately after the conquest,
and placed within its curtained tabernacle; and here it had rested through four
centuries, nearly up to the beginning of the Hebrew monarchy. This formed the
grand distinction of Shiloh above all other places in the land, that it was so
long the ecclesiastical metropolis of Israel, the earthly dwelling-place of Him
whom even the heaven of heavens could not contain, the centre-point of Jewish
worship, the annual gathering-place of the unbroken tribes, to which they came
up to keep holy festival unto the Lord.
It seemed to us far from
unlikely that this eminence on which we were then resting was the actual site
of the tabernacle, and that the dwellings of the priests and the other sacred
personages may have clustered along its sides down into the valleys beneath.
Some travellers of distinction have declared themselves unable to discover any
fitness in the selection of this spot and region as the seat of the tabernacle,
and the centre of the ritual services of the Hebrews. There has been a
flippancy of remark on this subject that has offensively savoured of
irreverence, and that has too much reminded us of the undevout astronomer who
criticized the planetary system which he did not understand. Even when we are
not able to discern the reasons of a divine arrangement, it would be utter
presumption in us to affirm that it was not, after all, the best. But as we
looked around us, we imagined that we could see more than one reason why this
Shiloh was, for so long a period, the chosen spot where "God should place his
name there." It has been remarked that it stood as near as possible to the
centre of the kingdom, and was therefore the most convenient for access by all
the tribes, even for those on the eastern side of Jordan. Then supposing the
tabernacle to have crowned this eminence, it could easily be seen from every
point in the surrounding country, even from afar. It is encircled by an
amphitheatre of hills all loftier than itself; and when the myriads of
worshippers came streaming towards it at the seasons of sacred festival, from
every corner of the land, we may imagine them to have pitched their tents on
those mountain-sides, so that their straining eyes could at any moment see the
place where Jehovah communed with his people, and the mysterious glory shone
above the mercy-seat. As the place, moreover, was evidently designed to be a
school for prophets, where men might pursue their studies in quietness, there
was wisdom in the arrangement that this college of seers and sacred teachers
should stand aloof from the common thoroughfare, and that its "calm retreat and
silent shade" should afford a ready refuge for such as were longing for "a
closer walk with God."
We could not forget, as we sat beneath the shadow
of that venerable oak, that some of the most beautiful and touching Old
Testament pictures must have had their scene near to where we were then
resting. Hither Hannah, that "woman of a sorrowful spirit," had come to plead
within God's own sanctuary, that he would take away her reproach; and hither,
four years afterwards, she had returned a grateful mother, leading her infant
Samuel, "asked of the Lord," to acknowledge answered prayers, and to perform
her vows in giving up her son to the life-long service of the tabernacle. Here
the wondrous prophet-boy had found within those hallowed precincts a yet better
home than hers, had been visited in his holy childhood by heavenly visions, and
sent on awful messages that must even have made the lips of age to quiver.
Within that curtained house he had daily
Pouted towards the kindling sides
His clear adoring melodies
and had grown up to be the greatest, the most
incorruptible, and the last of Israel's Judges. And how distinctly the
contemporary picture of aged Eli stood out before us, with countenance so
majestic and yet so shadowed and sad - clear in his moral sense, yet feeble and
vacillating in his will - reaping in the flagrant sins of his sons the bitter
reward of his parental indulgence - imperfect and yet real and true, shining
much in his hours of affliction by his sublime submission, and shining most of
all in the hour of death, when, sitting on a stool and leaning against one of
the posts of the tabernacle, he waited eagerly for the tidings of the conflict
between Israel and the Philistines - sorrowed when he heard that the battle had
gone against his people, sorrowed yet more when he learned that his ignoble
sons had perished in the struggle, but when he was told that the ark of the
Lord was taken, owned that this loss to his nation and dishonour to his God was
the heaviest stroke of all, and fell down broken-hearted to the
earth.
About a quarter of an hour southward from this old resting-place
of the tabernacle, there is a fountain making everything green around it, which
tradition points to as the scene of a memorable passage in Jewish history,
which finds its rough resemblance in the early Roman annals. Processions and
sacred dances largely intermingled themselves with the more devout observances
of the annual Jewish feasts. During one festival season, multitudes of Hebrew
maidens were engaged in a festal dance on the green-sward around this well,
when crowds of Benjamites, concealed in the neighbouring vineyards, suddenly
rushed upon them, and bore two hundred of them away to be their wives. It was
not an act of guilty passion, but, as it must have seemed to them, a terrible
necessity; and they could plead, at least, in palliation of their deed of
violence, that they were encouraged to it by the heads of Israel, and that it
saved a whole tribe from ignominious extinction. Passing through a narrow wady,
in which we could still see the traces of a winter torrent, we were soon again
on the highway to Sychar. At every mile of our progress northward, the country
improved in beauty and fruitfulness. Villages were frequent, cresting some
knoll or eminence, or half hidden among groves of olives; corn-fields dotted
the more level places; and little sparkling rills danced and made music across
our path. We were now, in fact, in the country of Samaria, and in the old
territory of the tribe of Ephraim, the most fertile region in all Palestine. It
was not in vain that the aged Jacob, whose dying vision
"Did attain To
something like prophetic strain,"
had pronounced his blessing on the two
sons of Joseph, and especially upon Ephraim the younger, giving him "the chief
things of the mountains," corn, and vine, and olive, and fig-tree all
flourishing in abundance amid those everlasting hills; for there,
far-stretching on our right hand and left, was the unspent virtue of the
patriarch's benediction. It somewhat marred our enjoyment of the rich country
and the sunny afternoon, to find two men from a village that we passed suddenly
attempting to seize our horse's bridle, with the evident intention of levying
black-mail; but they missed their aim, and cantering off, we did not give them
a second opportunity range of hills of considerable height now began to rise
before us, at some distance, like a wall; and apparently standing at their
eastern extremity, there was a bright mountain that towered like a
giant-sentinel above them all; while beyond, as if terminating a second range,
we could see part of another mountain covered with thick shadows, and
apparently quite as high. When we heard their names from our guide, we looked
towards them with deepened interest, for these were mounts Gerizim and Ebal,
clustering with old historic memories, and between which lay Sychar, our
resting-place for some days to come. In an hour after, we were riding through
the midst of tall flowers under the shadow of Gerizim, and conducted by our
guide to a broad level spot covered with large stones, which looked down on a
vast plain that stretched away eastward. What place was this, we asked of our
guide with some impatience? It was Jacob's Well!
We confess to a
temporary feeling of extreme disappointment. There was no spot in all Palestine
which could so certainly be connected with the presence of the incarnate Son of
God. We could say with undoubting assurance : On this very spot Jesus had sat
and conversed. From this very point he had looked forth on the scenes on which
we were now looking, which were no doubt unchanged in their grand natural
features. But while we knew from the notices of many travellers that the well
had been greatly injured, we were not prepared for such a complete defacement
of the old picture as this. We had thought of curb-stones around the ancient
fountain to which maidens might yet come down at times from Sychar with their
earthen pitchers, and their ropes to draw with, "for the well was deep."
Multitudes of huge stones lay littered and confused all around, some of them
broken pillars of granite, which, far back in the days of Eusebius and the
Empress Helena, may have supported the basilica that then covered and inclosed
the fountain; and in the centre of all this desolation, there was a hole
without fence around it of any kind, and less than a yard in diameter; - and
this was the mouth of Jacob's Well.. We looked down, and apparently about
fifteen feet from the mouth, it was clogged up with great stones which had
evidently been hurled in by the united strength of many men, and had stopped
each other's progress a long way from the bottom. This could not be the
consequence of mere neglect; it must have been the work of violence maddened by
Mohammedan fanaticism. Of course, no water was visible; we question whether at
any season of the year water can now be reached. The deterioration of this well
with recollections of three dispensations gathered round it, has been going on
for many centuries; but, in the last fifty years, very rapidly. In Maundrell's
time its depth was 165 feet, and it contained 12 feet of water. But the
constant throwing in of stones by passing travellers to assure themselves by
personal experiment that the well was deep, has steadily diminished its depth;
so that when it was visited by Dr. Wilson, and measured by him with his
accustomed accuracy, he found that it was only 75 feet deep, while at that
season of the year there was scarcely any water at the bottom. And now it had
become an absolute ruin. Thus were our dreams and pictures rudely
dashed.
There cannot, however, be any reasonable doubt that this is the
actual well of Jacob. The fact is certified by the most clear and
uncontradicted tradition coming down in unbroken line from the earliest times.
The place corresponds with the topographical notices in the Book of Genesis of
the "parcel of a field before" - that is, to the east of - "a city of Shechem,"
in which Jacob pitched his tent when he first came from Padan-aram, and which
he afterwards "bought at the hand of the children of Hamor for an hundred
pieces of silver." A look at the country, teeming everywhere with inexhaustible
fertility, shows the patriarch's skill in the choice of pasture-ground which
was free to all; while, at the same time, this purchased lot, with the well in
its centre in which he could claim absolute property, was of first importance
in carrying on his shepherd-life. We can read the traces of his right of
property in the spot, and his special claim to pasturage in the surrounding
regions, in his sending his sons with his flocks all the way from Hebron, in
the remote south of Palestine, that they might crop the luxuriant herbage all
around; and here it was that the youthful Joseph first came to visit his
brethren, and "see how they did," on that memorable occasion when, further
north at Dothan, he was sold to the Ishmaelitish merchants, and borne away to
Egypt - one of those apparently insignificant events which changed the history
of the world.
The question has many a time been asked, Why did Jacob dig
this deep well at such great expense and difficulty, probably one hundred and
eighty feet down through the solid rock, when there are so many natural
fountains up the Sychar valley not far off? The question is one of those
instances of interpreting Eastern customs by Western ideas which are produced
by half' knowledge, and from which have grown so much useless criticism, and
even witless scepticism. The fungi of doubt grow in sour and dark places. While
the pasture-lands in those early times were free commons, as they still are in
so many large tracts of the East, the fountains being rare, and indispensable
not only for drink to the cattle and the flocks, but also in many cases for
purposes of irrigation, were guarded with the utmost jealousy and
exclusiveness, and, as is evident from many a passage in Genesis, were the
occasion of frequent and bitter feuds. The proximity and abundance of fountains
in the region, gave no security to Jacob that he would be allowed the use of
them. His first obtaining a little freehold in the neighbourhood of one of the
richest grazing districts, and his then digging in it a well, were measures
necessary, not only for his independence, but for his finding the ample herbage
around him of any avail. And as this is undeniably the real Jacob's Well, so
down yonder in the hollow, several hundred feet to the north, and near to the
foot of Mount Ebal, is the traditional tomb of Joseph. We know from the Book of
Joshua, that in compliance with the oath which Joseph had taken of his
brethren, his body was taken, at the time of the exodus, out of the rich
Egyptian mausoleum in which it had lain embalmed for centuries, carried by them
all through the wilderness in their wanderings of forty years, and buried
somewhere in this very parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of
Hamor, and which he added, when dying, to the patrimony of his favourite son.
And why should we not believe that that is the actual sepulchre? There are no
signs that the ground about the tomb has ever been excavated; and probably the
sarcophagus lies concealed thereabouts which contains the embalmed dust of that
beloved son of Jacob's old age, over whose inimitable story the world has wept
for four thousand years. It is a square area, inclosed by white walls which are
covered with the names of pilgrims from every land; those in Hebrew characters
being predominant. Some tall trees surround it, which give to the whole an air
of seclusion and repose.
But all these older associations begin to fade
out of sight, as the recollection rises up before us that this same well was
the scene of that great conversation between Jesus and the woman of Samaria,
when she came down by that shaded olive walk at noonday to draw water from it,
and found the unknown stranger sitting wearied, probably on the curb-stone by
which it was encircled. We are in no ways disturbed in identifying this as the
actual well of the momentous interview, by being reminded that there were
fountains much nearer Sychar, from which the woman could have obtained water in
abundance; because there is ample proof, in the foundations of houses
discovered much nearer the well than the modern town, that the ancient Sychar
must have extended a good way further down the gorge. Moreover, there might be
a kind of superstition connected with the well in the woman's mind, by no means
inconsistent with the fact of her immoral life; while a real or imagined
superiority in the quality of the water, was probably sufficient then, as it is
now, to make an Eastern walk a distance even of miles.
And everything in
the inspired narrative fits in with an almost startling exactness to the
natural picture all around. Let a person take his seat on that fragment of
granite pillar which lies near the mouth of the well, and read the fourth
chapter of John's Gospel, and he will be struck with the fact that all the
great features of the scene are here very much as our Lord left them, and that
imagination has little more to do than introduce again into the picture the
living characters. At first, indeed, he shall probably be absorbed in
admiration at the grace and wisdom of the matchless Teacher, as it reveals
itself in his conversation with the solitary, ignorant, guilty woman. He will
wonder, as he reads, at the divine skill with which he makes the woman more
deeply conscious of her misery, stirs into activity her languid conscience,
sends in upon her heart the fire-flashes of his omniscience, breaks down within
her one barrier of ignorance and prejudice after another, and at length carries
the lamp of his truth into the very centre of her moral being, yea, carries
himself and a begun heaven with him. But let the reader come to that passage in
which the woman tries to draw our Lord away from dealing with her conscience,
to the old stale controversy about the place where "the Father ought to be
worshipped," and in which our Lord answers her in that memorable sentence which
was the death-knell of all local religions, and swept away all sacred places
from the earth by making every place sacred: "Woman believe me the hour cometh
when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father
[that is, exclusively]. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth," - and what a strange vividness is given to the
words, when, looking up, he sees the eastern extremity of that Gerizim to which
the Saviour must have pointed when he spoke, rising sheer up before him to the
height of eight hundred feet, and when he knows that yon white wely or
prophet's tomb, which seems almost to bend over the summit, stands on the site
of the old rival temple of Samaritan worship!
But let our imaginary
reader now be supposed to rise from his granite seat, and, closing his New
Testament, to look eastward. He will see the magnificent plain of Muckhna
stretching north and south many a mile, and extending in an easterly direction
as far as the banks of the Jordan, where a range of mountains terminates the
prospect. When we looked forth on this plain in an April afternoon, it was
waving with corn passing into the ear, and within a month of harvest; little
islands of olives dotting the expanse, and with their dark green forming a
lively contrast to the brighter emerald of the corn-fields. But when our Lord
was at the well, it was probably in January, when the seed had only been a few
weeks in the ground and the tender blade had just begun to appear. We may
conceive the remark to have been made by his disciples on their walk northward
from Judea that morning, "There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest."
And now let us imagine our reader to open John's inspired story again. The
woman has gone away, a good while since, to Sychar; the disciples are grouped
around their Master at the well, and he is earnestly conversing with them. As
he proceeds, he looks along the Sychar road, and sees the woman returning with
a company of persons whom she is bringing to see the great prophet whom in her
heart she believes to be the Christ. Jesus beholds in these the beginning of a
harvest of souls which he is about to reap, and again the scenery gives shape
and colour to his words: "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then
cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the
fields, for they are white already to harvest." You had been saying in the
morning as we walked along the skirts of the Muckhna plain, " It is four months
yet till harvest" But, see, in my spiritual kingdom there is scarcely an
interval between the sowing and the reaping. It is but an hour since I sowed in
that woman's dark heart the seed of my gospel; it has borne fruit already.
Meanwhile she has made haste to sow it in other minds; and in those approaching
multitudes, soon to be followed by many others, I see the whitening harvest of
immortal souls about to be gathered into my kingdom, into my heaven.
We
now ascend the valley of Sychar; and as we move round the base of Gerizim and
pass more into the centre, we are struck with the mingled grandeur and beauty
of the scene. It is indeed the most magnificent and lovely picture in all
Central Palestine. It is fitly guarded at its entrance from the east by the
nobly towering Ebal and Gerizim, which rise almost perpendicularly 800 feet
from the plain, and are separated at their base from each other by little more
than a distance of 1500 feet. Splendid cactus-trees stretch up the precipitous
slopes of Ebal; olive-groves adorn the sides of Gerizim. At first we ride
through corn-fields; then we enter among olive-forests, and enjoy their genial
shade; while through opening glades we see the sparkle and hear the rush of
many a rivulet. Down on a green plot where the trees are less abundant, we see
boys playing at leap-frog. There is the race and bound as among ourselves ; but
the dress of the Eastern boy does not suit so well with the game, except when
it has been carefully girded around his loins. Still there were many successful
leaps; and as often as this was the case, there were the clapping of hands and
the loud and jocund Ha, ha! of the onlookers, as we have so often witnessed at
home.
And now we enter the region of gardens, where, while the olive
still predominates, there are the mulberry, the apricot, the pomegranate, and
the vine, whose branches hang in graceful festoons from tree to tree, while
rivulets bound onward underneath, and send out a thousand little rills that
carry life and verdure and beauty everywhere. We know that Sychar is quite at
hand, but these gardens hide it completely from us, and we can only see here
and there the top of a minaret, in those parts of the ancient city that nestle
on the sides and in the clefts of Gerizim. Our servants had left us while we
were lingering at Jacob's Well, that they might have our tents ready when we
arrived at our resting-place on a green knoll a little to the westward of
Sychar. But the Sycharites have heard of our arrival, and are already
surrounding our encampment in great numbers. They look upon us with a scowling,
greedy look, that does not make us feel at ease; and some of our number begin
to speak of getting ready their revolvers. They are an intensely fanatical and
turbulent Moslem race; and it is just thirty-five days since there was a
wide-spread conspiracy among them to massacre the whole of the Christians and
Jews. And it was only a midnight message from the Christian missionary to the
governor at Jerusalem, that prevented the consummation of the tragedy. And
there is the good missionary come to welcome us, who, by a wonderful
providence, has both heard of our coming and been requested to show us all
manner of kindness. We were reassured by the grasp of that brother's hand so
readily stretched out to give us welcome; and ere we left Sychar, we needed his
friendship. Feeling great fatigue, and conscious how much, after all the
frettings of the week, we needed to have our soul " wound up to a higher degree
of heavenliness," we were glad indeed that " tomorrow was the rest of the
Sabbath unto the Lord."
Go To Chapter
Thirteen
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